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Teresa Meng wins ACM SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award

EECS alumna Theresa H. Meng (M.S. '85/Ph.D. '88 advisor: David Messerschmitt) has won the 2018 Association of Computing Machinery (ACM ) SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award. This award is given for significant and lasting contributions to the research on mobile computing and communications and wireless networking. Meng, who is a Professor Emerita at Stanford University and founder of Atheros Communications Inc., was cited "for groundbreaking research, engineering and entrepreneurial leadership to make Wi-Fi faster, lower power, and lower cost."

Chip Track, the microchip design innovation segment of Berkeley startup accelerator SkyDeck, is profiled in an Xconomy article titled "Berkeley’s SkyDeck Offers Chip Design Support Worth Millions to Startups." Unlike software developers, chip inventors need cash up front to produce prototypes to show how they run. “We’re talking about many millions of dollars,” says SkyDeck's Chong Tang. “Very few investors are willing to give you many millions of dollars just to hit run.” SkyDeck has enlisted two companies that will give its chip startups access to an array of services that would ordinarily cost customers as much as $2 million. Advisors to Chip Track's startups include CS Profs. Krste Asanović and David Patterson (emeritus).

Teresa Meng appointed to Ambarella Board of Directors

EECS alumna Theresa H. Meng (M.S. '85/Ph.D. '88 advisor: David Messerschmitt) has been named to the Board of Directors for Ambarella, Inc., a leading developer of low-power, HD and Ultra HD video processing semiconductors. Meng is a Professor Emerita at Stanford University who took leave in 1998 to found Atheros Communications Inc., a developer of semiconductor system solutions for wireless network communications products, which was acquired by Qualcomm Incorporated in 2011.

Undergraduates working to create smallest maneuverable satellite to fly into space

EECS undergraduates Aviral Pandey (EE lead), Olivia Hsu (board design/firmware), Kevin Zheng (board design/software/radio) and Malhar Patel (external/software), as well as Travis Brashears (Eng. Physics/EECS minor, tech lead) and Daniel Shen (MechE, software/mechanical) comprise a team of Berkeley seniors who are creating what they hope will be the smallest maneuverable satellite to fly into space. They plan to launch seven of their "SpinorSats," which weigh less than 10 grams each and are about the size of an Apple Watch, with KickSat aboard a CubeSat Deployer. With an advanced power management system, radio, and maneuverability system, they hope to push what is possible from cellular technology to eventually build connectivity between large networks of satellites.

Today's Entrepreneur: Allen Tsai

EECS alumnus Allen Tsai (B.S. '00), the founder of startup Pani, is profiled in the "Today's Entrepreneur" column for startup and investor network, Vator. Pani is a smart-home company that builds products to help consumers and utilities measure, monitor, and recycle water. It recently raised $1 million in seed funding which it will use to "acquire talent and drive product development." Prior to Pani, Tsai co-founded Azul Mobile and Ekata Systems. One of the top lessons he learned as an entreprenur is "It is all about the people. Hire people who are smarter than you and empower them to do their best work. If you are the smartest person in the room, there's a problem."

Turnitin Acquires Gradescope

Turnitin, a leading provider of academic integrity and writing solutions, has acquired Gradescope, a class grading platform co-founded by CS Prof. Pieter Abbeel and alumni Arjun Singh (B.S. EECS '10/Ph.D. CS '16), Sergey Karayev (CS Ph.D. '15), and Ibrahim Awwal (EECS B.S. '12/M.S. '15). The platform reduces the time associated with grading in college courses via an optimized online workflow and clever application of artificial intelligence. Developed at Cal when the alumni were teaching assistants, Gradescope is now used in most CS, Math, and Chemistry classes at Berkeley, and has quickly been adopted at many top higher-ed institutions, including half of all Ivy League schools, as well as at over twenty-five leading R1 universities. “Bringing Gradescope into the Turnitin family allows us to realize our mission across more subjects, with more instructors and students than ever before. Gradescope represents Turnitin’s first formal foray into STEM education, an area of increasing importance, that must also be held to high standards of academic integrity," said Turnitin CEO Chris Caren.

Corelight wins 2018 Network Security Innovation Award

Corelight, a cybersecurity startup co-founded by CS Prof. Vern Paxson, has won the 2018 Network Security Innovation Award from CyberSecurity Breakthrough, an independent organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global information security market. Corelight delivers "network visibility solutions for cybersecurity" by merging the power of an open source framework called Bro with a suite of enterprise features to create a line of sensors. These sensors make Bro dramatically easier to deploy in physical and virtual enterprise environments. The CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards recognize "the world's best information security companies, products and people."

Explore UC Berkeley’s culture of entrepreneurship with Hriday Kemburu

CS alumnus Hriday Kemburu (B.A. '16) is featured in a Daily Cal article about UC Berkeley’s start up ecosystem titled "‘Dream, build and start up’: Exploring UC Berkeley’s culture of entrepreneurship.' Kemburu is the CEO of Wildfire, which began as a UC Berkeley-specific safety app during Kemburu's senior year and branched out into a communications platform spanning more than 30 campuses. Wildfire is used for spreading the word about anything from crimes to celebrity sightings. Berkeley's network of startup incubators, accelerators, investors and classes have helped launch hundreds of companies.

Hanzhong (Ayden) Ye builds VR sharing platform

CS alumnus Hanzhong (Ayden) Ye (M.S. '12, advisor: Björn Hartmann) is profiled in an ejinsight article titled "Former Silicon Valley executives build VR version of YouTube." In 2016, Ye gave up his lucrative job with Sierra Ventures in Silicon Valley to establish VeeR VR, a Virtual Reality content sharing platform in China. The platform allows the growing number of content-creating VR enthusiasts to share their work with viewers via the web and mobile devices. In less than two years, the company has grown to 70 employees, while the number of its registered users around the globe has reached more than 20 million. Customers include corporate users such as travel companies, news agencies, restaurants, and hotels.

Oasis Labs raises $45M for ‘privacy-first’ cloud

Oasis Labs Inc., a startup co-founded and led by Prof. Dawn Song to build a high-performance cloud computing platform on blockchain, announced that it has raised $45 million in funding. Oasis is building a cloud-based blockchain platform intended to outdo existing distributed-ledger implementations in two key areas: performance and privacy. Song elaborated in a statement that “the Oasis platform aims to give users control over their data, without the underperformance and lack of privacy of existing blockchain platforms.” The funding round saw the participation of more than 70 investors including Accel and a16z crypto, an Andreesson Horowitz fund.